We realized we’d need more firewood for the night and the next morning, but when we got to the firewood place at the entrance to the campground, the wood bin was locked.
The store just outside the entrance had firewood, but I remembered a sign saying it was open until 7 p.m.
It was 7:05, I saw with disappointment, but there was a car out front so we gave it a shot.
The lady cheerfully rung us up, and her husband loaded our firewood. Then, he told us to come back and get more whenever we needed some; if the store was closed, just pay the next day.
In fact, he added, if we needed anything from the store after hours, just knock on the door of the RV next door and they’d take care of us.
Can it be that shop owners can just trust people to be fair with the honor system, and that they wouldn’t mind being interrupted after long hours at work when the store was closed?
I was already a fan of the store, because it has a little bit of everything at good low prices (not the super high tourist prices one would expect) and is pleasantly decorated and just overall had a positive vibe, so the next day, I dropped back in and chatted with the folks.
Michelle and Jimmy Mullins of Franklin County run Salthouse Store & More just outside the Salthouse Branch campground at Philpott Lake. Two of the couple’s four children, Olivia Mullins and Larry Hale, work there with them. They have a house but stay in the RV during the camping season.
Michelle said her grandfather, the late Early Shively of Bassett, “brought us here every weekend.” It’s where she learned to swim.
In fact, she’s familiar with all the campgrounds around there, and Salthouse Branch is her favorite: “It’s really family oriented.”
She has a degree in criminal justice and has worked in a prison, at her husband’s Custom Exhaust & Auto Repair on 220, across from Gilley’s Mountain (he’s also into racing) and even for the ABC to put a daughter through college.
She also has “this ability to bargain shop. I did so good on bargain shopping that he was like, ‘You need a store,” she recalled.
In the summer of 2019, the couple were out at the campground and stopped by the store, which had been owned by someone else for almost 20 years, and her husband half-jokingly told the proprietor that she should sell it to them.
She said no, but the next day she said yes, and the rest is history.
That was just before the pandemic shut down businesses, but “Covid helped it more than anything, because it forced a lot of people outside,” Michelle said. Even people who had never been camping before were pitching tents and launching boats – and stopping by Salthouse Store & More when they needed provisions.
She has added to it through the years, with a short order grill 3 years ago and a game room this year.
Way on down the end of Henry Road and then some, it’s such a long drive that only the propane, ice and ice cream companies will deliver. Everything else, Michelle has to go to town to buy. Sometimes she goes to town nearly every day, so she’ll pick up special orders for customers. A recent one was for Azo pills and cranberry juice a man requested for his wife who wasn’t feeling well.
She makes sure to stock a little of everything. When her family has an urgent need – something for the boat or to fix something that has broken down or fuses – she gets some for the store, too, because surely someone else eventually will need it too.
Richard Martin of Martinsville stopped by and chatted with her as she rang up his order.
He camps out there four or five times a year and loves the store, he said: “I hope it don’t ever leave. Now she’s got food and everything. Say you don’t want to cook. You come up here and she’ll cook you just about anything you want.”
He is one of many regulars she sees through the years.
The store’s guest book lists customers “from everywhere- India, Texas, New York. Some come the same weeks every year. I’ve watched their kids grow.”
Customers buying firewood on the honor system have never let them down, she said.
“I’ve never had a bad customer. It’s hard to say that in customer service,” she said.
“It’s the best job you could have. Everybody’s on vacation, and they’re so happy.”
